Thursday, April 11, 2013

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 April - 18 April 2013

It's a holiday weekend, so the studios bring out... Oh, just in Massachusetts and Maine? And I don't get Monday off? Well, then, it's no wonder it's not a big new release weekend. Might as well start with the local independent theaters, then, especially since they've got good stuff.

I'm guessing this is school vacation week, although the Brattle's Muppet Madness! series only continues through Patriot's Day with matinee double features Saturday (The Muppets & The Muppet Movie), Sunday (The Great Muppet Caper & The Muppets Take Manhattan), and Monday (The Dark Crystal & Labyrinth).

I hope that when The Coolidge Corner Theatre installs their DCP projectors soon, they'll make sure to label when they're using that and when they're using film. I think they're still all-35mm, so that makes it the place to see Trance, the new one from Danny Boyle with James McAvoy as the inside man in a heist who loses his memory of where he hid a painting, Rosario Dawson as the hypnotist charged with getting it out of his head, and Vincent Cassel as the thief who will beat it out of him otherwise. It also plays Kendall Square and Boston Common, while the Coolidge's 7pm show on Tuesday is an "Off the Couch" screening, at which I suspect members of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society will debunk as well as discuss.

The Midnight Road Trip movie this weekend is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with Terry Gilliam directing Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro in an adaptation of Hunter Thompson's roman a clef. They've also got two special screenings on Tuesday - Marian Marzynski's featurette Never Forget to Lie at 7pm and a sneak preview of the first two episodes of Sundance Channel's original series Rectify - while Wednesday has MassMouth taking over the main room for their "Story Slam Grand Finale".

The mainstream theaters, meanwhile, tie into the opening of baseball season and the anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947 with 42, with Chadwick Boseman playing Robinson and Harrison Ford growling as Branch Rickey. Nice cast beyond that and writer/director Brian Helgeland has some good scripts on his resumé. It's at Fenway, Boston Common, and Fresh Pond. Meanwhile, a lot of guys whose careers have seen better days star in Scary Movie 5, since it's been a couple years since the last one and there are new obvious pop-culture jokes to make. It's at Somerville, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and Fenway.

Boston Common also has Disconnect (as does Kendall Square), an interconnected-story drama that appears to be playing the "there's less real connection despite all the ways we can talk electronically" angle, which seems a bit stale. On the other hand, nice ensemble and a lot of folks speak highly of director Henry Alex Rubin's documentary Murderball. They also devote a screen to The Boston International Film Festival - not to be confused wtih the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which happens a few days later - and if you can dig through their terrible website, there are some interesting movies there, but there's a lot with just the vaguest of descriptions and no trailers or stills.

It's got to be considered a pretty busy week at Kendall Square; not only are they among the places getting Trance and Disconnect, but they've got new ones by notable filmmakers: Robert Redford directs and stars in The Company You Keep as a public interest lawyer whose past as a member of The Weather Underground resurfaces; amazing ensemble to it. Then there's To the Wonder from the suddenly-prolific Terrence Malick, with Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko as a married couple faced with temptation in the forms of Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem.

It's busy enough that they've barely got room to open Koch, a biographical documentary on New York's iconic 1980s mayor who recently passed away. It's marked down as a one-week booking, and only playing twice at day (4:15 and 7pm) at that. Still, if you go on Saturday, director Neil Barkshy will be at both shows to introduce and take questions.

The MFA has some good stuff; the biggest series is The National Center for Jewish Film’s Jewishfilm.2013 with five films playing at various times on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday (and at other times at the ICA and West Newton, plus a preview of No Place on Earth Monday at Kendall Square. The MFA also has three more screenings in the Hollywood Scriptures series - Taste of Money on Friday, A Separation on Saturday, and The Kid with the Bike on Sunday.

The other event is The Boston International Children's Film Festival, which has some really terrific movies for all ages playing Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (and continuing into next weekend). It kind of kills me that these are all matinees, because I would love to see Starry Starry Night again, but I can't skip work Tuesday morning.

Hey, the Harvard Film Archive has its program descriptions for the next couple months online! They're running two programs this weekend. Toward a Proustian Cinema ties in with a conference celebrating the work of Marcel Proust on the centennial of the publishing of Swann's Way. Two adaptations of Proust's work play this weekend - Time Regained (Friday 7pm) and La Captive (Sunday 4pm) - with a third coming up next weekend.

They've also got a visit from South Korean filmmaker Lee Jang-ho, featuring three films connected by "Art Cinema as Rebellion". He will be there for three 7pm showings: The Man with Three Coffins (Saturday), Eudong (Sunday), and Good Windy Day (Monday).

There's a pattern to ArtsEmerson's film program this weekend, but I'm not sure what it is. It includes Far From Heaven (Friday evening and Saturday night), Medicine for Melancholy (Friday night), Swimming to Cambodia (Saturday afternoon), and Zabriskie Point (Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon). The Bright Lights screenings are YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip with director Ben Evans on Tuesday and two student films with their directors on Thursday.

iMovieCafe has a Hindi movie with English subtitles, Nautanki Saala!, starring Ayushmann Khurrana as an actor who plays matchmaker between Kunaal Roy Kapur and Pooja Salvi.

My plans? 42, Trance, From Up on Poppy HIll, and whatever other catch-up I can manage. Maybe head to the furniture store for Jurassic Park in IMAX 3D. If you're free Tuesday morning, go see Starry Starry Night. It's terrific and (mostly) kid-friendly.

3 comments:

We're still 35MM at the Coolidge (in Movie House 1 and 2, anyway) for most stuff (including our features) until the distributors stop sending prints to us. I'll keep you posted on when we have to begin showing DCP on a regular basis.

I figure there will be an announcement when everything is installed; I'm also hope that you guys and the Brattle will highlight when you've got 35mm as opposed to DCP, just because I do decide where to see things based on that.